About Cal Skinner

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The friend who gave me this took umbridge at the extent of wrinkles on the woman depicted on the post card. Click to enlarge.

While not technically a politician, the union is certainly intensely political.

With this mailing to Tryon and, presumably other legislators, in support of higher taxes, SEIU is continuing its symbiotic relationship with Quinn.

I was the one that talked to Jim Thompson Budget Bureau about backing off from the Administration’s opposition to the bill after it came up in the Human Services Committee when Eugenia Chapman headed it in 1977.

The opposition was purely fiscally based.

I convinced them to support the bill if it were only funded for the last six months of the next fiscal year, when everyone was predicting that incoming taxes would increase.

I had just gotten back from my only foreign junket. It was to a NATO citizens conference, sponsored by the American Young Political Leaders. Then-State Senator Mark Rhoads had the slot, but decided to stay home and campaign. Without a fall opponent, it was ready-made for me.

One of the countries we visited was Denmark. I met a young Socialist Member of Parliament at a reception in a home on the North Shore of Copenhagen. She told me how her government had just concluded that it was cheaper to keep people in their homes than to put them in nursing homes. More humane, too.

The idea impressed me and when a North Side Democrat introduced a bill to create home health care I played a role in getting it passed.

Liberals in that part of Denmark, by the way, are called “Railroad Liberals.” In the Chicago area, we call them “Limousine Liberals.”